


Shotgun

by helsinkibaby



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Community: comment_fic, F/M, Het, Rare Pair, Romance, Shotgun Wedding, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 05:06:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9532922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: It was acceptable in the eighties.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Theme: the 80s  
> Prompt : any, any, it was acceptable in the eighties

"You don't have to do this."

That's hardly the first thing that a man wants to hear when he's down on one knee holding a ring box in one hand, and when it's accompanied by the speaker standing and walking away from him, Joe can't even pretend he understands what's going on. 

Well, the what he understands perfectly well. It's the why that's got him stumped. 

There are a dozen questions that are on the tip of his tongue: he keeps them all back. Instead he stands slowly, crosses the room to stand in front of Caitlin. She doesn't move away and he takes that as a good thing, but she doesn't meet his eyes either. "Cait?" 

Her lips press together into a thin line and she shakes her head. "You don't have to do this," she says again. Her eyes flick to his face, move away just as quickly. It's still long enough for him to see the pain there. "I know shotgun marriages were acceptable in the eighties but..."

"You think that's what this is?" He's surprised enough to cut across her and she's surprised enough that she looks up at him with wide eyes. 

"Isn't it?" 

"No." She blinks but he doesn't, reaches out and takes her hand in his. "Sweetheart, I got this ring weeks ago. Before you told me." Before he'd come home to find her sitting on their bed, her hands balled into white knuckled fists, her face pale and her eyes red and he'd suddenly found himself almost thirty years in the past, watching Francine with the exact same expression on her face as she'd said the exact same words. Back then, her daddy and his momma had told him what he had to do, what he would have done anyway. Here, now, there was none of that, not when he'd been planning for it already. 

"You did?" Her eyes are filled with suspicion but, if he knows Caitlin, there's the tiniest bit of hope there too. 

"Ask Barry if you don't believe me." Because Joe had talked to him about it, asked him how he thought Iris would react. Barry had just grinned and hugged him and recommended the jeweller that had sold him Iris's ring. "Caitlin, I want to marry you... baby or no baby."

She stares into his eyes for the longest twenty seconds of his life before a smile breaks over her face and he feels an answering one cross his own lips. "Is that a yes?" he asks and she nods, tears in her eyes as she says the only thing he wants to hear. 

"Yes."


End file.
